Deadly bridge collapse led to safety checks

The city NORTH CANTON — is closing the book on a decades-old practice.

North Canton’s Mayor’s Court will hear its final cases next month. Violations that used to go to mayor’s court — income tax cases, speeding tickets, parking violations and other misdemeanor traf- fic infractions — will transfer to Canton Municipal Court.

Operating the court used more time and resources than it brought in, said Direc- tor of Administrative Services Patrick DeOrio.

“Administratively, it’s too much to deal with. It takes away from our primary focus. There’s huge downside risks financially. And there’s a better alternative,” he said.

DeOrio, who will take over as the city’s director of administration on Jan. 1, began looking at court operations earlier this year.

Any Mayor’s Court cases where a defendant plead “not guilty” were transferred to Canton Municipal Court. To make that system work, North Canton had to make sure court functions, such as case numbers, were compatible with municipal court, DeOrio said.

The city also examined the finances involved in running the court.

When the court’s clerk retired over the summer, the city began looking at the cost of replacing that position or training other employees to take on those functions, he said.

“It became clear there’s no real upside to operating a mayor’s court from a financial perspective,” he said. “That may have been the case decades ago but not now.”

Mayor’s courts

Ohio allows the mayors of municipalities with a popu- lation of at least 201 people (Put-In-Bay with a population of 138 is the exception) to hold a court. The court is only permitted to hear vio- lations of local ordinances or state traffic laws.

Contrary to the name, mayor’s court cases aren’t usually decided by the mayor but instead an appointed magistrate.

Magistrate Derek McClowry h as presided over North Canton’s court since 2016.

“One of the sad parts to it is that in doing this, we have to say goodbye and thank him for his service,” DeO- rio said. “He’s been such a blessing.”

In 2016, 297 Ohio municipalities had a mayor’s court, according to the Supreme Court of Ohio.

About 85 percent are in areas with fewer than 10,000 residents.

Including North Canton, Stark County has five mayor’s courts. According to the Ohio Supreme Court: East Canton handled 262 cases in 2016; Hartville had 213 cases; Louisville had 250 cases; and Minerva had 710 cases.

North Canton had 1,457 cases in 2016.

The number fluctuated significantly year-to-year, DeOrio said.

In lean years, the city may have to subsidize court oper- ations with money from the general fund, he said.

Municipalities with mayor’s courts earn money from the court costs attached to tickets.

For example: A speeding ticket in North Canton will cost you about $138. A por- tion of that, about $35, goes to the police department. The remainder is divvied up between state agencies and the city.

“Very little of what’s left was contributing to the ongoing operations of this court,” DeOrio said. He estimated that North Canton earned about $50 per ticket.

Municipal court

Tickets issued now are already being processed through the Canton’s munic- ipal court.

Tickets in North Canton will increase about $10 to $15, DeOrio said. The police department will collect the same fees per ticket, but the municipal court charges higher court costs.

North Canton police also have a chance to move to an electronic ticketing system through the municipal court. Instead of writing paper tickets, officers can swipe a driver’s license and print out a ticket, then send that information electroni- cally to the court.

The city in c lu d ed the equipment in the 2018 bud- get, DeOrio said. The new system will make it faster and easier for officers to write tickets and eliminate clerical errors, such as transposing numbers on a license plate.

The switch to municipal court also will improve the experience for those who get tickets in North Canton, he said.

If someone plead not guilty in mayor’s court, they’d have to plead again in a municipal court hearing. Now, they’ll only need to plead once, he said.

The municipal court online ticket payment system func- tions better than North Canton’s and has less fees, he said.

Folks also w ill see improved customer service.

Municipal court clerks are trained and efficient at handling court matters, he said. “They deal with thousands of calls a year, that’s what they do. Here we don’t.”

In North Canton, clerks have to balance several job functions. If someone called with a question about court or stopped by City Hall to pay a ticket, they often had to wait.

“From our point of view, it became critical that if we want to move into other avenues in 2018, we have to get out of the mayor’s court business,” he said.

Truck CHARLESTON, W.VA. — driver Bill Needham braced for death at the bottom of the Ohio River after a bridge collapse in West Virginia 50 years ago sent his rig and dozens of other vehicles into the frigid waters.

A crucial joint in the 39-year-old Silver Bridge’s eyebar suspension system snapped from years of cor- rosion and neglect, and the normal vibrations of heavy rush-hour traffic on U.S. Route 35 shook it apart on Dec. 15, 1967. Cars and trucks that had been stuck in traf- fic on the bridge due to a malfunctioning traffic light tumbled into the river at Point Pleasant, and 46 peo- ple perished.

Needham thought he’d be among them.

“I expected to be killed. I really did,” Needham said in a recent telephone inter- view from his home in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Desper a te and deter- mined, Needham tugged a window down far enough to slide out as the truck sank to the bottom of the river. Then 27, Needham made his way to the river’s surface and found a floating box to grab onto.

Rescuers in tugboats pulled him out of the water. He was hospitalized with a broken back. Needham’s truck driving partner, asleep in the cab’s rear, didn’t make it out.

U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph, chairman of the Senate Public Works Commit- tee, immediately launched hearings into the collapse of the bridge, which hadn’t been thoroughly inspected in 16 years, according to the National Transporta- tion Safety Board.

The hearings led to the first federal requirements mandating bridge inspections at least every two years. Since 1988, federal standards have required that submerged ele- ments of all bridges with substructures in water must be inspected at regular inter- vals not exceeding five years. Guidance issued last May allows for underwater inspections every six years on lower-risk bridges when adhering to Federal Highway Administration-approved criteria.

“The Silver Bridge collapse was a national wake-up call and inspired a much more aggressive effort to inspect and maintain bridges across the country,” acting Federal Highway Administrator Brandye L. Hendrickson said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “In fact, this tragedy propelled the nation into a new era” of bridge safety. Federal data shows that while nearly onefourth of the nation’s 611,000 bridges were either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete in 2015, that’s a drop from more than 30 percent in 2000. Most structurally deficient bridges are in rural areas.

President Donald Trump has said he’s working to streamline the permit process to get major infrastructure projects like roadways and bridges finished faster. A $1 trillion overhaul of the nation’s roads and bridges is a key item on his domestic agenda — but one that’s gained little traction.

Interstate highway construction accelerated during the 1950s and early 1960s. Now, bridges along major highways “are coming to the point where they’re going to need significant rehabilitation, or in some cases, replacement,” said Rocky Moretti, director of policy and research for Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit transportation research group TRIP.

Federal data shows there are about 73,000 bridges nationwide at least 75 years old, including 12,241 past the century mark. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, bridges are typically constructed with a design life of 50 years, and those built from 1957 to 1976 show the greatest need for maintenance, reconditioning or replacement.

In about a dozen states, including West Virginia, 30 percent or more of their bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In October, state voters passed a $1.6 billion bond referendum for road and bridge repairs and construction.

Needham returned to work in 1968 and continued his North Carolina-to-Ohio route for the next eight years, carrying him over the Silver Memorial Bridge, built in 1969 a few hundred yards downstream from the old bridge.

T he new bridge “was built as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar,” Needham said.

Officials marked the anniversary of the Silver Bridge collapse with a ceremony.

Needham said he once had a closet full of newspapers with stories about the collapse. But no longer.

“I just threw them all away,” he said. “I wanted to wipe myself away from it.”